


These Are the Nights

by raedbard



Category: The West Wing
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-25
Updated: 2008-03-25
Packaged: 2017-10-07 00:19:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 624
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raedbard/pseuds/raedbard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are enough nights when all they have between them is sex."</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Are the Nights

There are enough nights when all they have between them is sex: a mindless sense of coupling and nothing greater than his deep, smooth slip inside her, lost, drunk on bodies and nothing else, forgetting who she is in the smell of bedlinen at the end of the day and her hair hot against his face.

She closes her eyes because she does not want to picture him. She holds on instead to a nameless someone who does not demand the things he does; who she could never want as she wants him, in all his imperfections, in all the swallowing up of light into darkness. She lets him own her body, for a few minutes, because she has stopped caring, or stopped wanting to care about the mechanics of birth, life, conception. She just wants to fuck, and have it not mean anything at all. She is not sure that he is the right person to provide, but he is the only one here.

He stutters, shifts. He is done but she isn't and she rubs up against him, looking for release, longing for something which feels disturbingly like the start of an oblivion. His fingers slip between her legs; she pushes against them: reaches, holds her breath, falls from the brink.

He tries to kiss her, gently, afterwards. She turns her head away.

There are other nights. There are nights on his balcony: two glasses of wine, cold air, the smell of the city, his eyes glinting darkly across from her. His smile; her answer. He kisses her, warm and truthful. Always there. She can't imagine a time when he won't be: on the other side of the bed, at the other end of the phone. She reaches out for his hand, pulls him close against her body so that the collision steals the air from her body. She puts her face into his neck and breathes him in: no cologne, a little alcohol, a lot of smoke. Frustration, sadness, the promise he makes her with his eyes, every day. She kisses the skin at the sharp of his jaw. He lets out a noise which might be called a laugh, in someone else.

They dance, on the balcony. Almost. She moves her feet with grace; he shuffles with embarrassment. But when she presses a kiss to his mouth he stops, completely still, to pull her up to his body, to press on her an insistence - of what, she isn't sure. She has no doubt that he loves her, that he desires her, that he has promised all the things you're supposed to promise when you get married, and that he never intends to break his word.

And yet, there is desperation on his tongue. Something to prove, or disprove. Some assurance he needs. She doesn't know how to give it. Because she has been thinking about walking out their front door and not coming back, of packing a bag, of scrunching up this whole sorry mess in her hands like so much paper and bringing out a fresh sheet: somewhere else, some other way.

But not some other someone. Only him: big, blunt fingers and dark, staring eyes and his hatred of apologies; his scotch in what she still thinks of as her kitchen; his footsteps in her sleep; his heart in her hands.

She sighs, kisses him, inhales his breath and his slow, imperfect, insistent, impossibly familiar expression of love. She rests her head over the place where she knows his heart to be, under his sweater, under everything. His hand covers her hair, his other makes a patch of warm at her hip. He rocks them back and forth on his heels. She closes her eyes, and pictures him.


End file.
